Microsoft Creative Director steps down following twitter gaff

Adam Orth departs company after controversial remarks around always-on consoles.

Adam Orth, a creative director with Microsoft, has stepped down from his role with the computing giant following a controversial twitter exchange in which he mocked gamer's concerns around an always-online Xbox successor.

Game Informer cites unnamed sources within the company who say that Orth has left and that an attempt to contact him via the Microsoft switchboard came up empty.

Orth ridiculed to recent reports that Microsoft plans to make it's next generation console require a constant internet connection in order to work.

Accusing critics of being behind the time and making mountains out of molehills, Orth's twitter exchange with BioWare developer Manveer Heir caught the attention of gamers in Reddit.

Burned by recent experiences with unreliable always-online games, such as Diablo III and SimCity, gamers took Orth and Microsoft to task for the comments, promoting an official company apology.

“We apologize for the inappropriate comments made by an employee on Twitter yesterday,” read a statement.

“This person is not a spokesperson for Microsoft, and his personal views do not reflect the customer centric approach we take to our products or how we would communicate directly with our loyal consumers.”

It has yet to be confirmed that Orth has since left Microsoft or that the company is indeed implementing an always-online requirement for its Xbox 720.

James Lee

James Lee is a freelance writer and analyst with extensive experience in the technology, media and games sectors. For the past few years he has provided content for internationally published industry reports, SEO companies and a variety of news-focused websites. Prior to this, James was responsible for covering news and producing in-depth features for GamesIndustry.biz while occasionally contributing to its sister-site. Eurogamer.net. In addition to this he has contributed to other notable sites such as CVG.co.uk, Edge-Online and DigitalSpy.